Kelly: D-Day landing site invokes sense of quiet awe

OMAHA BEACH, France — The barbed wire atop the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc still glistens in the afternoon sun just as it did 70 years ago. Nearby, the bomb craters are still deep and ominous. And on a quiet field of grass that overlooks a beach code-named “Omaha,” the graves of the dead are lined up in perfect order.

Battlefields tell stories. But the 50-mile stretch of France’s Normandy coastline holds a special place in history, especially today, seven decades after American, British and Canadian soldiers waded ashore to begin a final year of savage fighting to crush Adolf Hitler’s plan of world domination.

To go to those beaches now is to walk a journey of war and remembrance, of fathers and uncles and sons – and, yes, a few mothers, aunts and daughters, too – who passed over these sands. To come here is to feel a sense of quiet awe.

The commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day comes as America is trying to extract itself from more than a decade of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. All too sadly, the contrast between those modern battles and those that took place at Normandy could not be more striking.

D-Day represents a war whose goals were always clear and whose legacy was never doubted. The goals and legacy of America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are still the subjects of debate.

And while the courage of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq remains as unquestioned as that of the soldiers of D-Day, few battles involving America’s military resonate as the events along the Normandy coast of France.

Consider what happened at Pointe du Hoc, a ragged line of 90-foot cliffs that jabs the ocean surf like a menacing arrowhead. By the spring of 1944, the cliffs were believed to be home to cannons that could hurl shells on the two American landing zones, Omaha and Utah beaches.

Those field guns needed to be silenced – or else thousands of soldiers’ lives would be at risk. Constant bombing by air forces or barrages from Navy battleships could not wipe out the German batteries atop Pointe du Hoc.

So on the morning of June 6, 1944, about 225 Army Rangers landed on a narrow, rocky beach at the base of Pointe du Hoc. After launching grappling hooks to the top of the cliffs – with many of the hooks attaching themselves to the barbed wire that is still there — the Rangers climbed hand-over-hand, on rope ladders as German soldiers fired at them.

When the Rangers reached the top and forced the Germans to retreat, they discovered that the large guns had been moved inland – to an apple orchard. But the Rangers were ordered to hold the cliffs anyway. After two days of fighting, with few places to hide except bomb craters, only 90 were left.

Today, a plaque with the names of the dead Rangers adorns a German bunker. Tourists pause and study the names, sometimes shaking their heads in disbelief at what took place on a spot that now seems more suited to a picnic than the site of a horrific bloodletting.

The same could be said of much of the Normandy countryside.

It is a landscape more suited to the soft brushstrokes of Norman Rockwell-like painters than the menacing military chess matches of such strategists as America’s Dwight Eisenhower and German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

Cows graze in rolling fields, framed by the hedgerows that proved to be so deadly in the months after D-Day, as squads of German soldiers used the thick cover of trees and bushes to ambush Allied soldiers. And U.S., British, Canadian and French flags that adorn monuments in village squares and at intersections flap in the sea-borne breezes.

There is almost none of the wreckage of war left on these fields, along the roads or in the towns – no rusty, flame-scared trucks, no helmets or rifles or forgotten canteens. Even the Sherman tanks and trucks that adorn roadside memorials and museums are all freshly painted and bear no dents or bullet holes.

Indeed, the setting of today’s Normandy masks the scale of the carnage 70 years ago.

More than 4,400 Allied lives were lost on D-Day, with about 1,200 U.S. soldiers dying on the sands of Omaha Beach.Thousands more were wounded.

Over the next 10 months until Germany surrendered, the U.S. would suffer 165,000 more deaths and 600,000 wounded.

Thirteen U.S. divisions of roughly 12,000 soldiers each would suffer 100 percent casualties – meaning that every soldier who landed at Normandy on D-Day or in the months afterward would be killed or wounded and replaced. Five U.S. divisions suffered 200 percent casualties. The Army’s First Infantry Division, which landed at Omaha Beach in the first wave and would serve more than half-a-century later in Afghanistan and Iraq, was awarded 21,000 Purple Heart medals during World War II.

That level of bloodshed seems impossible by today’s standards when even one soldier’s death understandably taps into a national reservoir of anguish and entire towns stop for the funeral. Yet that kind of mass killing was normal in those years – on that landscape.

And so was the courage.

At a bridge named after Pegasus, the winged stallion of Greek mythology, a force of fewer than 200 British commandos landed from the air in the hours before the beach landings of D-Day.

Actually, to say the commandos “landed” is an overstatement. They crashed in plywood gliders that had been dragged through the air by larger, motorized planes, then released over Normandy to float downward like hawks slowly circling toward prey – in this case a bridge over the Caen canal that German forces might use to attack the landing beaches.

The commandos carried out their mission after midnight – with no radar, no landing lights, no runway, no radios. The gliders smashed into the hard fields and trees near the bridge. Some of the commandos were killed or injured just in the landings.

And yet, the commandos seized the bridge and fought off German counterattacks aimed at stopping the landings. They realized they were to be rescued the next day when they heard the moan of a bagpipe leading British forces up a nearby road from the beaches.

The story of that British military bagpiper – Bill Millin – is told by many at Normandy now. In some ways, it’s a light-hearted tale. Before marching up the road toward Pegasus Bridge, Millin marched up and down the bullet-raked sands of Sword Beach, playing his bagpipes as a way to encourage soldiers to attack and not to be afraid.

Millin was not killed – or wounded. He died in 2010 after a career as a psychiatric nurse in Scotland. He was 88.

Millin’s death underscored an inevitable fact about Normandy and World War II – that the generation who fought there and in the Pacific is disappearing. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War II, slightly more than 1 million are alive. About 1,000 die each day.

But the stories of Millin and Pegasus Bridge resonate for other reasons. Like Pointe du Hoc, the story of Pegasus Bridge is one that seems surreal in these days when the military is equipped with drones, smart bombs and commandos who go into battle with night-vision goggles and miniature radio headsets that allow them to whisper instructions to one another – not listen to bagpipers.

Invariably, though, what unites all wars are the graves of the dead.

And so, after visiting Pointe du Hoc and Pegasus Bridge and a few spots in between, I walked amid the more than 9,000 graves of U.S. soldiers on a flat, grassy field above the surf of Omaha Beach.

In our group were daughters and sons of soldiers who landed at Omaha, some still wondering why their fathers never spoke about that horrific day – and the months that followed.

Our group marveled at how one soldier who died on D-Day itself was buried next to one who died weeks later, how graves marked by a Christian cross were mixed with others marked by a Jewish Star of David.

We took pictures. We wondered what it was like to bury so many soldiers in so short a time.

Then we walked to a non-denominational chapel.

We said a prayer and sang a verse of “God Bless America.”

We left – in silence.

After all these years, Normandy still speaks best as a silent reminder of what war does to us.

Kelly: D-Day landing site invokes sense of quiet awe

OMAHA BEACH, France — The barbed wire atop the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc still glistens in the afternoon sun just as it did 70 years ago. Nearby, the bomb craters are still deep and ominous. And on a quiet field of grass that overlooks a beach code-named “Omaha,” the graves of the dead are lined up in perfect order.

Battlefields tell stories. But the 50-mile stretch of France’s Normandy coastline holds a special place in history, especially today, seven decades after American, British and Canadian soldiers waded ashore to begin a final year of savage fighting to crush Adolf Hitler’s plan of world domination.

To go to those beaches now is to walk a journey of war and remembrance, of fathers and uncles and sons – and, yes, a few mothers, aunts and daughters, too – who passed over these sands. To come here is to feel a sense of quiet awe.

The commemoration of the 70th anniversary of D-Day comes as America is trying to extract itself from more than a decade of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq. All too sadly, the contrast between those modern battles and those that took place at Normandy could not be more striking.

D-Day represents a war whose goals were always clear and whose legacy was never doubted. The goals and legacy of America’s invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan are still the subjects of debate.

And while the courage of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq remains as unquestioned as that of the soldiers of D-Day, few battles involving America’s military resonate as the events along the Normandy coast of France.

Consider what happened at Pointe du Hoc, a ragged line of 90-foot cliffs that jabs the ocean surf like a menacing arrowhead. By the spring of 1944, the cliffs were believed to be home to cannons that could hurl shells on the two American landing zones, Omaha and Utah beaches.

Those field guns needed to be silenced – or else thousands of soldiers’ lives would be at risk. Constant bombing by air forces or barrages from Navy battleships could not wipe out the German batteries atop Pointe du Hoc.

So on the morning of June 6, 1944, about 225 Army Rangers landed on a narrow, rocky beach at the base of Pointe du Hoc. After launching grappling hooks to the top of the cliffs – with many of the hooks attaching themselves to the barbed wire that is still there — the Rangers climbed hand-over-hand, on rope ladders as German soldiers fired at them.

When the Rangers reached the top and forced the Germans to retreat, they discovered that the large guns had been moved inland – to an apple orchard. But the Rangers were ordered to hold the cliffs anyway. After two days of fighting, with few places to hide except bomb craters, only 90 were left.

Today, a plaque with the names of the dead Rangers adorns a German bunker. Tourists pause and study the names, sometimes shaking their heads in disbelief at what took place on a spot that now seems more suited to a picnic than the site of a horrific bloodletting.

The same could be said of much of the Normandy countryside.

It is a landscape more suited to the soft brushstrokes of Norman Rockwell-like painters than the menacing military chess matches of such strategists as America’s Dwight Eisenhower and German Field Marshall Erwin Rommel.

Cows graze in rolling fields, framed by the hedgerows that proved to be so deadly in the months after D-Day, as squads of German soldiers used the thick cover of trees and bushes to ambush Allied soldiers. And U.S., British, Canadian and French flags that adorn monuments in village squares and at intersections flap in the sea-borne breezes.

There is almost none of the wreckage of war left on these fields, along the roads or in the towns – no rusty, flame-scared trucks, no helmets or rifles or forgotten canteens. Even the Sherman tanks and trucks that adorn roadside memorials and museums are all freshly painted and bear no dents or bullet holes.

Indeed, the setting of today’s Normandy masks the scale of the carnage 70 years ago.

More than 4,400 Allied lives were lost on D-Day, with about 1,200 U.S. soldiers dying on the sands of Omaha Beach.Thousands more were wounded.

Over the next 10 months until Germany surrendered, the U.S. would suffer 165,000 more deaths and 600,000 wounded.

Thirteen U.S. divisions of roughly 12,000 soldiers each would suffer 100 percent casualties – meaning that every soldier who landed at Normandy on D-Day or in the months afterward would be killed or wounded and replaced. Five U.S. divisions suffered 200 percent casualties. The Army’s First Infantry Division, which landed at Omaha Beach in the first wave and would serve more than half-a-century later in Afghanistan and Iraq, was awarded 21,000 Purple Heart medals during World War II.

That level of bloodshed seems impossible by today’s standards when even one soldier’s death understandably taps into a national reservoir of anguish and entire towns stop for the funeral. Yet that kind of mass killing was normal in those years – on that landscape.

And so was the courage.

At a bridge named after Pegasus, the winged stallion of Greek mythology, a force of fewer than 200 British commandos landed from the air in the hours before the beach landings of D-Day.

Actually, to say the commandos “landed” is an overstatement. They crashed in plywood gliders that had been dragged through the air by larger, motorized planes, then released over Normandy to float downward like hawks slowly circling toward prey – in this case a bridge over the Caen canal that German forces might use to attack the landing beaches.

The commandos carried out their mission after midnight – with no radar, no landing lights, no runway, no radios. The gliders smashed into the hard fields and trees near the bridge. Some of the commandos were killed or injured just in the landings.

And yet, the commandos seized the bridge and fought off German counterattacks aimed at stopping the landings. They realized they were to be rescued the next day when they heard the moan of a bagpipe leading British forces up a nearby road from the beaches.

The story of that British military bagpiper – Bill Millin – is told by many at Normandy now. In some ways, it’s a light-hearted tale. Before marching up the road toward Pegasus Bridge, Millin marched up and down the bullet-raked sands of Sword Beach, playing his bagpipes as a way to encourage soldiers to attack and not to be afraid.

Millin was not killed – or wounded. He died in 2010 after a career as a psychiatric nurse in Scotland. He was 88.

Millin’s death underscored an inevitable fact about Normandy and World War II – that the generation who fought there and in the Pacific is disappearing. Of the more than 16 million Americans who served in World War II, slightly more than 1 million are alive. About 1,000 die each day.

But the stories of Millin and Pegasus Bridge resonate for other reasons. Like Pointe du Hoc, the story of Pegasus Bridge is one that seems surreal in these days when the military is equipped with drones, smart bombs and commandos who go into battle with night-vision goggles and miniature radio headsets that allow them to whisper instructions to one another – not listen to bagpipers.

Invariably, though, what unites all wars are the graves of the dead.

And so, after visiting Pointe du Hoc and Pegasus Bridge and a few spots in between, I walked amid the more than 9,000 graves of U.S. soldiers on a flat, grassy field above the surf of Omaha Beach.

In our group were daughters and sons of soldiers who landed at Omaha, some still wondering why their fathers never spoke about that horrific day – and the months that followed.

Our group marveled at how one soldier who died on D-Day itself was buried next to one who died weeks later, how graves marked by a Christian cross were mixed with others marked by a Jewish Star of David.

We took pictures. We wondered what it was like to bury so many soldiers in so short a time.

Then we walked to a non-denominational chapel.

We said a prayer and sang a verse of “God Bless America.”

We left – in silence.

After all these years, Normandy still speaks best as a silent reminder of what war does to us.